Lion Of The Desert Unleashed On DVD

Anchor Bay has confirmed that Lion Of The Desert is to be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on 2nd July 2012.

Directed by Moustapha Akkad, the producer behind the Halloween series, Lion Of The Desert is a period piece in the vein of Lawrence Of Arabia and a true epic at almost three and a half hours. Like The Message five years previously – which Akkad also directed – Lion Of The Desert was a Libyan production financed by Colonel Gaddafi.

Set 1929, the story follows Omar Mukhtar, a Bedouin teacher forced into guerrilla warfare by the invasion of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in his quest to establish Greater Italy – a rekindling of the Roman Empire, starting with areas of northern Africa to be annexed under Italian rule, creating Italy’s “Fourth Shore.”

For over fifteen years Mukhtar has led a successful campaign against the invaders, who were unfamiliar with the local geography or the practicalities of desert warfare. To crush Mukhtar and his resistance, Mussolini dispatches General Rodolfo Graziani, later to become known as the Butcher of Fezzan due to his organising the construction of concentration camps where thousands died of disease and starvation.

The tanks and planes Graziani deploys into the desert bring the kinds of battles the Bedouins are utterly inexperienced in fighting. However, they are not fighting for glory or colonialism, but for freedom, a cause no one relinquishes but with their life.

By Andrew Marshall

Office minion by day and geek overlord of West Lothian by night, Andrew
Marshall contributes to onlyinedinburgh.com, moviemuser.co.uk and…

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